Trump’s ambiguous history muddles U.S. Presidential race

“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”

That’s what Donald Trump said about Republican presidential nomination-seeker Carly Fiorina in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine last summer. Once news became entertainment, should anyone be surprised that politics turned into reality TV?

The fight to secure the party nomination for President, especially on the Republican side, resembles an irksome episode of American Idol, rather than a sober assessment of who would make the best leader of the United States, and arguably, the free world.

By that measure, there is no surprise that Donald Trump is leading the Republican pack heading into the Iowa caucuses. If politicians are salesmen of hope, Trump has no equal in the field. He may well be the best salesman in the world, if you don’t dig too deeply into his resumé — or care about the quality of the aluminium siding he has on offer.

But he is also a bully, a braggart, a towering narcissist, a misogynist, a constitutional ignoramus, and a racist. Despite the endorsement of neocon windbags like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, there is something that Trump isn’t that will come back to haunt him in the end. He is not really a conservative.

Yes, Trump is routinely fluffed up by right-wing talk show hosts for the edification of the slogan-primed hordes who follow them. Conservative caricatures like Ann Coulter unreservedly offer their slack-jawed adulation of Trump in public.

But as powerful as Trump’s populist appeal might be, he has fashioned a split in the Republican party. And it is not just on the editorial pages of the National Review and the Wall Street Journal. It is also in the backrooms of the big money backers who see a crisis developing for the Republicans.

But “The Donald” gets the cold shoulder from the genuine neocon commentators like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and blue-chip conservative publications like the National Review and the Wall Street Journal. They have him pegged. Donald Trump is just an opportunistic charlatan of the Right.

Take abortion, where Trump has worked both sides of the canal. Last year, he described himself as “pro-life”. It was a different story back in 1999, when he told his former buddies at Fox News that he was “totally pro-choice.” You could call that moral flexibility. You might also call it the death march of principle.

It is also noteworthy, as the National Review reported, that Trump once proposed a one-time, 14.25 per cent wealth tax on individuals and trusts with a net worth in excess of $10 million — a plan that would certainly have had tax-cut Republicans choking on their canapés.

While most Republican candidates for the party’s nomination want cuts to so-called “entitlement programs” like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Trump is odd man out. No cuts and a trade war with China is his answer to make the U.S. great again.

Perhaps that’s why conservative carnival barker Glenn Beck says Trump stands for big government — which may be the reason that Beck, who once earned his living bursting into tears on TV while rhapsodizing about the founding fathers, has thrown his support to Texas senator Ted Cruz. But not to despair; Trump won the endorsement of that screech owl of the Right, Sarah Palin. Surely the evangelicals can’t be far behind.

Trump’s view of health-care in particular (at least the one he endorsed in 1999), is even more unpalatable to core conservatives, who equate watered down Obamacare with socialist witchcraft. Trump wrote that he was a liberal on the subject of single payer health-care, and that the Canadian “prototype” should be adopted and improved on. You can’t spout more bug-eyed apostasy than that to Ronald Reagan’s flock.

And then there is Trump’s tactless trashing of other countries he accuses of “ripping off” the United States in trade deals, notably Mexico, Japan, and China. He has since added Saudi Arabia to that list, in effect demanding protection money from the Kingdom in return for U.S. help to ward off threats from regional rivals like Iran. He sounds more like a mafia don than a president.

The final inanity? In the wake of Trump’s personal battle with Megyn Kelly of Fox News, Trump tried to prove ownership ties between the television network and Saudi Arabia. He re-tweeted a doctored image of Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal posing with his sister and news anchor Kelly.

The Prince fired back. “Trump, you base your statements on photoshopped pics?! I bailed you out twice; a third time, maybe?”

The Saudi royal’s rebuttal referred to timely purchases of Trump assets when the real estate mogul was reportedly $900 million in debt. The prince’s investment company bought the Plaza Hotel in New York and Trump’s personal yacht. Trump’s response as reported by the Independent in the U.K.? The prince was “dopey.”

So Trump is progressive, belligerent, completely without political experience, and as diplomatic as a punch in the nose.

He is the place where ego liberation, blind ambition and megalomania meet and mingle. Why then is he the frontrunner for the nomination of a party that once thought Rudy Giuliani was too progressive to be a Republican leader?

The answer is to be found in the first three people who exited the race for the Republican presidential nomination without causing a ripple: the governors of New York, Louisiana, and Texas. Three sons of the establishment with considerable political experience weren’t even considered by Republicans.

Why? The political status quo is seen in this election cycle as a rigged system. The grassroots wants change. Trump is by that judgement an attractive option for those who have lost faith in Establishment politics and are seeking a messiah to lead them to the promised land — however they define it.

But as powerful as Trump’s populist appeal might be, he has fashioned a split in the Republican party. And it is not just on the editorial pages of the National Review and the Wall Street Journal. It is also in the backrooms of the big money backers who see a crisis developing for the Republicans.

Will the Koch Brothers, for example, who spent $400 million in 2015 supporting right-wing politics and causes, and who plan to spend $900 million this year, want to turn their party over to a progressive with a distressingly liberal resume hitched to a bizarre policy agenda that features walling off Mexico and banning Muslims from entering the United States?

If they don’t, and Trump wins in Iowa, watch for an Establishment pile on in which both the financial and intellectual Right join forces to stop The Donald. The question is just who the go-to person might be? A dramatic split is in the offing for the Republicans between those who see Trump as the answer and others who see him as the problem.

The beneficiary of the turmoil on the Right should be Hillary Clinton. But in fact, she faces the same dissatisfaction on the left with the political status quo as candidates like Jeb Bush do on the Right. Compared to Bernie Saunders, Clinton is inextricably linked to politics the way it has been practiced for the last quarter century — First Lady to a president, senator from New York, and former Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

It is in this last capacity that a strange possibility arises. Clinton’s handling of the assassination of the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi has been widely criticized. Her subsequent explanations of what happened have also been described as dishonest.

But far more dangerous to her potential candidacy is the fact that the FBI has been actively investigating Clinton for indictable offenses relating to negligence in her handling of classified government information.

Clinton had top secret documents on her private email account and a private server. She initially claimed that she didn’t send any classified documents via her private email, but it turns out that she did. Now people like former U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenovaare talking about a “massive revolt” inside the FBI if the Bureau recommends indicting Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch does not follow their advice.

And so an odd possibility enters the reality TV show of this year’s presidential nomination races. What if two relative outsiders, Donald Trump and Bernie Saunders, vanquish establishment candidates because the public wants change? A split on the Right, and a faltering Hillary Clinton campaign, could create the perfect conditions for a third party candidacy.

Former New York mayor and multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg has sniffed the wind and circled back to consider a run for the presidency. A week ago, the publication of that fact gave him 12 per cent of Republican support to be the party’s nominee. A week later, veteran pollster Frank Luntz reported that Bloomberg’s support had rocketed to 29 percent.

The latest Bloomberg-sponsored poll, though, showed little support in Iowa for his candidacy. But that is to be expected on behalf of a candidate merely dipping his toe in the political waters and who hasn’t campaigned anywhere.

Given fears about Trump and misgivings about Clinton, divided Democrats and disgruntled Republicans just might eventually find America’s first Jewish president an attractive proposition.

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Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His nine books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, is a number one best-seller and has been shortlisted for the Governor-General’s Literary Award for English-language non-fiction.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.